


For Peace of Mind

by Rimetin



Series: Can You Hear Me [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Camaraderie?, Gen, Insomnia, OCPD - Obsessive Compulsive Personality, Symmetra is surrounded by idiots, implied Sanjay/Satya, of sorts, other characters make cursory appearances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 05:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8652070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rimetin/pseuds/Rimetin
Summary: Assignment Overwatch was the first time in Satya Vaswani's career that she thought: I can't do this. The thought creeps upon her on a sleepless night, in the early hours of the morning just two weeks into her stay at Watchpoint Gibraltar. It rises as a mere whisper from the back of her head, just loud enough to make itself heard over the echo of her heels as she wanders the complex.  Insomnia, introspection, and unexpected meetings in the middle of the night.





	

Assignment Overwatch was the first time in Satya Vaswani's career that she thought: _I can't do this._

The thought creeps upon her on a sleepless night, in the early hours of the morning just two weeks into her stay at Watchpoint Gibraltar. It rises as a mere whisper from the back of her head, just loud enough to make itself heard over the echo of her heels as she wanders the complex. She crinkles her brow, pushing the thought away, as she might flick off a speck of dust. What an absurd notion – of course she can do this. She has always succeeded in what she does, one way or another. Giving up simply isn't her.

She thinks back to Utopaea, to Vishkar headquarters: back to Sanjay's parting words to her.

_He stands by the window, dark eyes gleaming in the sunlight filtered through, carefully combed brown hair framing a handsome profile. In his hand he idly spins an angular device – she recognizes it as one of her early hard-light constructs. The sight prompts a strange rumble in her chest, though she cannot tell why._

_“Do you see, Satya?” His voice is friendly, honeyed. She straightens up, lifting her chin and meeting his eyes as he turns to her. “This Overwatch, as it is, is dangerous. To you, to me, to Vishkar – even to the common man.”_

_He sets the hard-light toy down on the desk and rounds it, fingers sliding along on its surface. He stops in front of her and smiles, posture relaxed, leaning his hips on the desk and bracing himself on one arm._

_"You know they cannot be allowed to operate unattended. We must know their movements. That is why we need you – you are our best. We have utmost faith in you, Satya."_

_A hand brushes the loose strands by her visor. "_ I _have utmost faith in you, Satya."_

Satya purses her lips. Yes: she _is_ the best. There is nothing she can't do. Infiltrating Overwatch included.

With the annoying thought subdued, she starts again down the hall, footsteps echoing off the metal walls.

 

* * *

 

The thought returns to her not two days later, nagging again in the back of her mind as she sits in the base's canteen, sharing breakfast with the other agents. She sits slightly apart from the rest of them, methodically picking at her plate and sipping her tea. No one tries to include her in the conversation; most of them gave up within the first week, if they ever even tried. Some were quite happy to leave her to her own devices from the start. That suited her just fine.

But just sharing a space with some of them – _most_ of them, if she’s to be quite honest – was proving to be increasingly difficult. Satya is unable to hide her distaste witnessing the two Australians (Jamison Fawkes, codename: Junkrat, and Mako Rutledge, codename: Roadhog; couple of trigger-happy outlaws and ruffians) gorge whatever food they can get their hands on, going so far as licking their plates and utensils clean; she openly frowns upon the loudness of certain older warriors (Reinhardt Wilhelm and Torbjörn Lindholm, codenames same as their first names; they’re living legends, part of the original team that became Overwatch) and their impromptu arm-wrestling match over who gets to eat the last of the scrambled eggs; she pretends to not be actively ignoring the vile thief (Lúcio Correia dos Santos: his dossier is well known to her – to everyone at Vishkar Corp., in fact) no doubt spreading his anarchist propaganda, and doing so with the most outlandish and incongruous sounds she ever heard—

She finishes her breakfast quickly and excuses herself. The others barely notice.

_I can't do this._

She shakes her head, angry. So what if her supposed colleagues are a pack of barbarians? It does not concern her. She is here to do a job: to observe, and to report back to Vishkar. Not to make friends, certainly not to "be a hero" or "save the world", as the bubbly Brit (Lena Oxton, codename: Tracer – Satya has yet to determine if her excitable mannerisms were a result of her tragic accident, or if it's just her personality) had put it.

If anything, the boorishness of these people just proves Vishkar's concerns: they cannot be left to their own devices, to operate unattended.

She _can_ do this.

Even if no one here seems to know what orderliness is. She thinks back to the uneven slices of fruit on her breakfast plate and shudders.

 

* * *

 

The doubts return with a vengeance again that same night. Satya closes the door to her assigned room and crashes unceremoniously on the bed, kicking off her heels without caring where they land for once. Her whole body aches.

She wishes she had the vocabulary to properly articulate what an absolute catastrophe the day has been. The Talon agents had been incredibly persistent, even without their two lead figures, and the team had barely kept up. Each and every one of the thirty-one turrets she had placed around the area within that hectic half hour had been destroyed. It was a miracle her teleporter hadn't been, as well. In fact, she muses and a wave of calm satisfaction sweeps over her, the teleporter had been the only thing keeping them in the fight. But its upkeep hadn't come cheap. She remembers vividly the weapon trained on her, the finger flexing to squeeze down on the trigger, to gun both her and her constructs down—

And the arrow that curved from behind her and struck the man square in the chest; the way he’d dropped like a stone.

She shifts awkwardly and sits up. Without the archer (Hanzo Shimada, codename just his name – as new to the team as she is, and just as reserved) she might well be dead. Or at the very least strapped to a bed in the medical bay, spending a night or two there instead of just the brief visit she'd had earlier. She’d be like the young South Korean woman (Hana Song, codename: D.Va; a professional gamer and national hero – a rather colorful persona), whose mech had been compromised and Satya couldn't shield in time. She had been about to, but Talon was faster. She remembers: the flash of pink and purple as the girl darted out of the wreck of her massive MEKA, the shots from her blaster, the splash of red when she was cornered and struck down.

Satya shakes her head briefly and furrows her brows, getting up to disrobe. It wasn't her fault the girl got hurt. They all knew the risks when they joined Overwatch, whatever their reasons. Besides, the damage was hardly anything the good doctor (Angela Ziegler, codename: Mercy; brilliant surgeon and leading researcher in the field of biotics – Vishkar has followed her movements for years) couldn't fix. Satya nods to herself, folding her blue dress and setting it on the chair next to her bed. She has nothing to feel guilty about. She _owes_ them nothing. Not the archer, not the gamer. Not the doctor, the gorilla; _certainly_ not the thieving DJ.

She settles down on her bed again, the now familiar thought still hounding her.

_I can't do this._

 

* * *

 

She wakes with a start at exactly 3:52 AM.

She lays still for a moment, disoriented by the silence ringing off the thick metallic walls around her. She misses Utopaea; the lightweight structures, pleasing to both mind and body; the harmonious colors; the soft murmur of life hidden within. The total opposite of the oppressive atmosphere of the Gibraltar base.

Satya sits up, fingers gently massaging her temples. She's always had trouble with sleep – a type of insomnia, she's concluded. Nothing truly helps. If she wakes up like this, in the middle of the night, there’s no hope of getting any more sleep until the evening. She sighs and gets up, dressing swiftly. If she is awake, there's no point in lingering in bed. She knows from experience that she isn't going to fall asleep again.

She pulls on her heels, sneering at the way she'd haphazardly cast them aside the previous night and just left them there. So uncharacteristic of her. She refuses to think about the reasons for that and instead peers out into the hallway.

It's silent, as always when she wakes in the night. No one is awake at this hour. Well, she muses, maybe the omnic monk (codename: Zenyatta, one of the Shambali monks, like Tekharta Mondatta had been) and his cyborg protégé (Genji Shimada, codename just his name, like with his brother – the archer who'd saved her), but even they might have powered down for the night. Or perhaps Dr. Ziegler, considering what had happened the day before. It wasn't unusual, Satya had noted very early, for the good doctor to spend long hours in the medical bay, even without patients. Doubly so when there was someone to care for.

She steps out, heels clinking on the cold, hard floor. She shields her eyes from the lights that flicker on above her: motion sensors. She almost wishes they weren't on, if only because they're so dim, they only serve to worsen her vision. Squinting, she starts down the hall, not particularly caring where she ends up. She has found that walking, absurd as it may be, helps her think and clear her head after abrupt nighttime awakenings like this. She only laments the crude surroundings she has to conduct said walks in: so, so different from Utopaea. From home. With air and space and light everywhere, even in the dead of night. Nothing like these cramped, dark spaces and confining metal walls.

She rounds a corner, and nearly runs into a figure, if not for him gracefully stepping around her. Satya blinks; was she really so lost in thought she didn't hear the other approaching? How careless.

 _You're losing your touch_ , the all too familiar voice in the back of her head whispers. She furrows her brow, pushing such thoughts away with determination and focuses on the figure before her. It's the archer, she realizes: Hanzo Shimada. Suddenly a plethora of questions sit on her tongue: why is he awake at this hour? Why is he here? Does he know she might be dead if not for him? Does killing that man even faze him? Does he think about what happened during the day at all? Does he—

She swallows them all. Instead, "My apologies. I did not hear you."

"And you wouldn't, unless I wished for you to." He replies, his face stern – she's unsure if it has something to do with her, or if it's just how he always appears. In her limited experience, it's likely the latter, but she has found the man to be enough of an enigma that it could as easily be the former as well. Not that reading people is her forte anyway.

"Ah." Not knowing what else to say, she draws a breath and raises her chin, straightening her posture. "Good night, Mr. Shimada."

"Good night, Miss Vaswani," he replies tersely and continues on his way down the hall behind her. Satya notes with surprise his footsteps truly are nearly inaudible. She muses on that for a moment before resuming her own walk into bleak base built within the hard rock of the cliff face.

It takes her several minutes to realize that for the first time since her arrival, she’d been addressed by name.

 

* * *

 

It became nearly a nightly occurrence.

Virtually every night – as had been the case for the whole two weeks she'd spent at the base – she'd wake hours before daybreak, silence and lack of light suffocating her as if there wasn't enough oxygen within the rocky walls to sustain her. Unable to go back to sleep, she'd dress and get out into the hallway to walk away lingering drowsiness and intrusive thoughts. And Hanzo Shimada would pass her as she went, offering a polite nod or occasionally even some manner of verbal greeting, which she would return; slightly surprised, but not displeased.

They'd never acknowledge those meetings during the day. They would both eat their breakfast silently, slightly away from the others, and excuse themselves as soon as they were done. During any assignments together, they would exchange polite greetings not unlike those in the nightly hallway. Satya would shield Hanzo with a flick of her wrist, and he would thank her; he would dash from one sniper's nest to another and she would construct deathly traps based on his information of enemy movements. Satya found she enjoyed that; harmonious collaboration. Each doing their own part to keep the larger whole going.

The aggravating voice in the back of her head seems to quiet down, subdued by the strange sort of balance she's found.

 

* * *

 

Ten days after their first nightly encounter Satya starts awake later than usual: the clock reads 5:06. Most of the base won't be awake for another hour or two. She sighs and starts her usual routine – dress, hair, shoes, door, walk. She laments again, for what feels like the hundredth time, the dreary surroundings. The halls look exactly the same at all times of the day. It's disorienting, to say the least.

She's pulled from her thoughts by a strange noise. One that repeats; three _thuds_ in quick succession. As she gets closer, she realizes the thuds are each preceded by a kind of whistle. She's wandered into the training area; the door to room number three is slightly ajar. She treads closer to look at the display beside the door. _In use_ , it reads. Logged in at 0403 hours, agent ID #4274.

Curious, she pushes the door open just enough to slip inside.

It's Hanzo. Satya thinks she sees him spare her a cursory glance but isn't sure; he never ceases his exercise. He stands with his legs parted, feet planted firmly on the ground. Facing her, but his head turned in an elegant profile towards his mark – a target some twenty meters away. He has three arrows in his right hand, one on the bowstring he's pulled taut, muscled arms shaking only the slightest amount under the pressure. He releases the string and immediately draws in back again, another arrow nocked. Whistle _, thud._ Whistle _, thud._ Whistle _, thud._ Three in quick succession, each striking dead center, almost close enough to split one another.

She's seen him do that in combat before, of course. But up close, uninterrupted like this, she can't help but be slightly mesmerized by it all. The curt, methodical efficiency he fires each shot with; the grace with which he reaches into his quiver and draws the string. Each movement he makes, from the broadest stroke of his arm to the smallest twitch of his finger, serves an explicit purpose. Nothing lacking nor in excess. Perfect balance. Very different from her own swirling, dance-inspired moves, but with similar goal.

When he doesn't speak even when he eventually has to walk over to the target to retrieve his arrows, Satya takes it as an invitation to stay. She effortlessly constructs a chair out of pure light and sits down, back straight, eyes keenly following his every move. In his presence, she realizes, she cannot hear the little voice whispering demeaning remarks and doubts to her.

The clock on the far wall reads 06:01 when Hanzo retrieves his arrows for the last time and instead of returning to his shooting spot packs them in his quiver and slings his bow on his back. Satya stands up as he heads towards her and destroys her chair with a flick of her wrist: it deconstructs into light particles that flash once and disappear into the air.

Hanzo stops between her and the door, inclining his head towards her slightly. She returns the nod, proud chin barely shifting. She thinks she sees his lips twitch – in amusement or contempt, she cannot tell – but it’s gone as soon as she registers it.

“Miss Vaswani,” Hanzo murmurs, and exits through the door. They close behind him with a soft thud and Athena’s mechanical voice announces the vacating of the room and notes the time.

“Mr. Shimada,” Satya says softly to the empty space where he stood. For the first time in a while, she feels at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Symmetra is one of my favorite characters in Overwatch, so I thought I'd write a bit. She's also a character I relate to on certain levels, so in a way this is a rather personal piece. 
> 
> I find the idea of her and Hanzo's interaction really interesting: what would their relationship be like? I like to think they'd get along. I wasn't able to properly dig into it in this, but I might write more. Probably make this a series. Idk, it's been a while since I've written anything proper, so tell me what you thought maybe?


End file.
